U.S: Boycott talk premature

February 15, 2007 10:00am

Talk of boycotting ministers in a Palestinian Authority national unity government is premature, the U.S. State Department said. “Back up!” spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters Thursday when they asked him about reports that U.S. officials would not deal with ministers of the relatively moderate Fatah Party in such a government. “Where are we in this process? You don’t have a government of national unity. You don’t know who’s in that government. You don’t know the platform of that government. You don’t know, if it comes into existence, what they are going to say about their policies and what they’re actually going to do. So you have a lot of blanks here to fill in. And on the basis of that lack of facts, I can’t offer you an answer.” The international community has isolated the Hamas government because it embraces terrorism and rejects Israel’s existence.